Police and Coast Guard officials yesterday told a Taiwan High Court hearing that none of their personnel had been deterred from voting in the presidential election because of heightened alert after President Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) and Vice President Annette Lu (呂秀蓮) were shot on March 19.
"We always follow the standard procedure when carrying out necessary security measures in different situations," Liu Shih-lin (劉世林), deputy director-general of the National Police Agency said.
"During the presidential election on March 20, we did not do anything out of the ordinary," he said
Liu said that according to regulations for the presidential election, officers had to suspend their regular off days and report to work in case of an emergency. However, the agency also asked local police departments, precincts and stations to allow their officers to leave temporarily if they wished to vote.
"Most officers would have given up their right to vote to go home and sleep because they were simply too tired after work," Liu said.
"As for the total number of officers who did not vote, the agency never counted them," he said.
Liu made his testimony during a High Court hearing yesterday morning. Regarding the March 19 assassination attempt on the president and vice president, Liu testified that the agency learned of the incident from TV news.
"We heard the news at 2:25pm on March 19. But, around 2:33pm, the Tainan Police Department reported that the president and vice president were injured by firecrackers, which was later corrected and confirmed as an assassination attempt," Liu said.
According to the schedule for this week's hearings, presiding Judge Wu Ching-yuan (吳景源) will repeatedly summon head officials from the nation's military, police, security and coast guard services to figure out whether any personnel were forced to give up voting because of the activation of the so-called "national security mechanism" after the assassination attempt -- an action the pan-blue camp claims cost them the presidential election.
Coast Guard Deputy Director Yu Chien-tzu (游乾賜) testified that the Coast Guard Administration did not recall staff because of the shooting, although, following a request made by former coast guard director Wang Chun (王郡), the staff who were on duty were on a heightened alert in case those involved in the shooting attempted to flee the country.
"We have 15,825 staff members, and according to our statistics, 3,795 of them did not vote," Yu told the hearing.
"But according to our investigation, these people did not vote because their bases were too far away from polling stations," he said.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods